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Alastair Compston, From the Archives, Brain, Volume 128, Issue 8, August 2005, Pages 1743–1744, https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awh594
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‘Pain in the head in connection with cerebral disease’. By David Ferrier, MD, FRS Brain 1879; 1: 467–83.
‘It seems at first strange, not to say unaccountable, that the centres of sensation and perception are themselves devoid of sensibility or sensitivity, and may be cut, lacerated, burnt, or otherwise injured, without the slightest indication of local suffering being manifested.’ But, as Ferrier goes on to explain, those organs that do give rise to pain when injured, have peripheral end-organs and nerve terminations that are capable of stimulation; and they are connected by nerve trunks to neural centres. Sensation depends on these three elements being in continuity. Thus, there are no sensory ‘nerves’, merely sensory ‘apparatus’ consisting of peripheral organ, nerve and centre. As George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) put it in Problems of Life and Mind (1874–1879) where, whilst allowing some separation, he sought to establish the dependence of mind on physiology and social experience (see pages 1741 and 1951): ‘the function depends on the collocation (sic)’.
